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Best Of The Best 2006: Runco Cinewide With Autoscope

Movies are best viewed large and wide, on a broad canvas that pulls the audience into the middle of the action. But while newer home video technologies have increased the size of the picture, they have struggled to expand the width. Widescreen televisions accommodate high-definition broadcasts and most movie DVDs, but if you really want to watch Lawrence of Arabia or Ben-Hur, or a modern hit such as Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith as it was meant to be seen, you need to install a projection system. Yet even this has not provided a perfect solution until the advent of Runco’s Cine­Wide with AutoScope technology.

CineWide with AutoScope combines video processing that stretches the image vertically—eliminating the black bars that you usually see on widescreen films shown on standard-proportion TV screens—with a motorized anamorphic lens that stretches the image horizontally to restore the proper geometry. This proprietary technology, which most Runco projectors employ, lets you view movies that are filmed in Cinema­Scope exactly as the director intended and allows the projector to use its full pixel array, enhancing the resolution and brightness of the image. Runco’s VX-2c high-definition-capable projector with CineWide (about $40,000) is an especially good choice for producing large-screen video with the finesse required for detailed and vibrant images.